


the deal's done

by lackingsoy



Series: hand over hand [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Bitterness, Book 3: The King's Men, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Missing Scene, Panic Attacks, Pre-Relationship, allison is catty but also not rly, can ppl care abt kevin day for a hot minute pls. thank, kevin day gets validated, renee takes sides bc i say so, riko can die, two and a half breakdowns later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26022523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lackingsoy/pseuds/lackingsoy
Summary: "Does it hurt," Allison's voice was bleak."What do you think," Kevin replied, somehow managing to sound steady despite his closed throat.Allison looked at him, eyes remarkably cool for someone who went toe to toe with Seth and other despicable players. "I think," she said, lips popping on the last word: "You, Kevin Day, are heartbroken."Five fingers, one promise, and the end of a lifeline. Post-hotel scene, the long hours after but before Neil gets picked back up by the Foxes, wherein Kevin stares into the face of his wounds, Allison extends an olive branch, and Renee decides, in the privacy of her own mind, to stop playing mediator.
Relationships: Allison Reynolds/Renee Walker (All For The Game), Kevin Day & Allison Reynolds, Kevin Day & Andrew Minyard, Kevin Day & Renee Walker
Series: hand over hand [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1887538
Comments: 19
Kudos: 88





	the deal's done

**Author's Note:**

> oh fuck FORGOT TO PROPERLY CREDIT THE LOVELY @ESSENCE29 ON TUMBLR for beta-reading and helping me overhaul the entire thing! thanks to them the everything in this is Better.

"Anyone sitting here?"

Kevin flicked a dead look to whoever had spoken. Allison. 

She looked almost as terrible as Renee, black-eyed, with dried blood crusting the edges of her nostrils. Between boarding the bus and now, she’d pulled her hair into a ponytail like she would before a game. Kevin couldn’t comprehend how she did it so neatly; she and her lot had looked at him with such horror and raw disbelief when Neil’s and the Moriyama’s secrets were being choked out of him, their hands shaking and useless in halting the spew of curses. 

Kevin wondered how this changed the way they saw him. If his miserable visage brought them any sense of victory: here sits Kevin fucking Day, thrown violently off his high horse by a midget who barely came up to his collarbone. 

"Is this for a dare," he asked conversationally, less like a question than a throwaway soundbite. Slipping in and out of personas was still as easy as it's ever been. Right now he was in limbo, sliding between the Public-Faced Son of Exy and Edgar Allen's 02: smooth, even, hard, dim, cold. He did not know how to be Palmetto’s Kevin and he didn’t even think he wanted to if it meant having to cope with the new noose around his throat. "If so, you can leave."

"Rude," Allison didn't move. “That’d be a shitty fucking dare.”

Kevin turned his face away, fixating on the sheen of his bus seat window. They never played nice on or off the court; he couldn’t see why they would be bothering with him now. “Why are you here, Reynolds?” 

“That,” one manicured nail pointed to the leather seat beside him, as if that explained everything. “Has my name on it.” 

Kevin didn’t bother with replying. Allison didn’t bother waiting for it. She parked herself next to Kevin, a measured space between them.

Then, finally, the reason why she came to him at all: "Come to my room when we get back. I'll put makeup over," in the window’s reflection, Allison gestured towards his neck without looking away from what she could see of his head. "That. Deal?" It was an offering and an order all in one, and Kevin knew idly by her tone there was no room for argument.

"Fine," he said, and they fell silent again.

"Does it hurt," Allison's voice was bleak. She probably already knew that it did, that it hurt like all hell: a bruise over a bruise that made it terribly hard to talk, but which simply could not compare to the thing burning away into ash in his chest. The five fingers seared into the hollow of his throat were not the worst marks on him but somehow they were the most obliterating.

"What do you think," Kevin replied, somehow managing to sound steady despite his closed throat.

Allison looked at him, eyes remarkably cool for someone who went toe to toe with Seth and other despicable players. "I think," she said, lips popping on the last word: "You, Kevin Day, are heartbroken."

That was not a word he would use, not now or ever. So when he laughed, pained and rough, could Riko blame him? Could Andrew? 

"I'll take that as agreement." Allison leaned back.

"You know nothing," Kevin said, to the window. In the reflection, he thought she saw her mouth move in the shape of a scoff.

"Maybe," Allison replied. "But I just won three bets and I know how you look at him. So maybe I do know something."

Kevin wanted to throw open the bus doors and let the road have him. Let the dust settle over him: "You. Know. Nothing."

Allison turned on him then and smiled, a smile that would've convinced Andrew to take her to Columbia like he had Renee and Dan and Matt if he had seen it when she'd first arrived. "Something," she said, and her voice pinned down his and dared him to spin out another lie.

Kevin did not reply. He didn't say, _Fine._ He maxed out on his concessions today, and he didn't want another one forced out of him. So he faced forward again and stared holes into the back of Matt's seat and did not speak for the rest of the ride.

When they arrived on campus, Wymack killed the engine, got up from the driver’s seat, blocked the rest of the foxes from filing off, and gave Kevin a pointed look which he didn’t return. He just pried himself out of his seat, mechanically shouldered his bags, and was the first one out the doors. 

Nobody questioned it. Allison followed him off next but not before tossing a look to Renee and Dan, too brief and knowing of an exchange for Kevin to fully understand. She snagged his jacket sleeve and maneuvered them in the direction of the dorms. 

“I know where the dorms are,” Kevin said, staring at the hand she had on him. It was not a particularly intrusive touch, but it was light and gentle-like, and that unsettled him. He was not glass. He was not so breakable that he needed to be shown mercy in every passing minute. He lived through a decade of Evermore and Riko and damn them for thinking that he couldn’t live through this, too. 

“I know,” Allison said, a precise interjection in his swirl of silent accusations. She didn’t let go of him, and instead looped her arm in his and effectively locked them together in a weird two in one. “I don’t want you to run off.”

“Where would I go?” Kevin wanted to laugh again. His throat was running dry.

“Anywhere.” 

Kevin desperately wanted this day to be over. “I’m not Neil.”

“Obviously. Unless you want to burn off your number, too?”

Kevin’s throat closed, and Allison walked him all the way back to the dorm room she shared with her two best friends in absolute silence. She unhanded him to sort out her keys and unlock the room, propping open the door for him and giving him a cursory once-over.

“You might want to get your stuff out of your room first,” she said, and that put enough surprise in his system for him to blink twice at her.

“What.” He said, uncomprehending. 

“Towel, underwear, t-shirt.” Allison popped off a finger for each one before using her entire hand to gesticulate down the hall. “You’re going to take a shower, I’m going to freshen up, and then you’ll have your makeover. After that, drop dead or don't, whatever. As long as you do it in here,” Allison jabbed a thumb behind her, "I won't come bothering you, and neither will the rest of us."

“You expect me to sleep here,” Kevin said, part disbelief, part indigestion, and massive confusion. 

Allison looked at him like he was an imbecile. “Yes,” she said slowly. “We don’t want you sleeping in the same place as Andrew tonight. And I sincerely doubt you’d like to be anywhere near Neil, either.”

Kevin decided to leave those two rigged sentences alone and asked instead: “Whose ‘we’”? 

“Coach,” Allison said. “Me, Matt, Dan, Renee. Even Nicky. Especially Aaron. We excluded Andrew for obvious reasons.”

Kevin couldn't find it in him to breathe. He couldn’t find it in him to believe, either--that they would care all that much, not when Neil is off somewhere being questioned by the FBI, not when he never prepared them for it, not when they looked at him and saw a drunkard and a coward and a liar.

"Why are you even trying for me?" He finally said, and his voice cracked, small and nearly indiscernible but invariably there. Almost, _almost_ sharp enough to bring the rest of him down.

If Allison could soften, black eyes and black blood and all, it was in the hand she lifted and placed on his arm, and squeezed; quick and fierce and full of dangerous promise. 

"Even you did not deserve what the monster did to you," she said, voice gone low, and maybe Andrew should permanently reassess his ability to judge people because she was everything he had thought she wasn't. 

Kevin felt something knot behind his eyes. He thought he could see the marks Andrew had screwed into the skin of her neck, too, all those weeks ago, but his vision went slant. He couldn't say it. He couldn't say anything at all. All he had was the hand Allison had on his forearm, as light and furious as smeared paper, and the one that had ruined him.

"You're a fox," Allison told him, as if that was enough, as if that explained everything he could not betray. She kept her hand on him for a moment longer before taking it away. The look she gave him was assessing and determined and near contemptuous. "Don't forget it."

His throat shuttered. He supposed he could never get away from this, just as Neil wasn't able to. "Fine," he said, and if it was a muted croak of an acquiescence through his lips, Allison let it pass undeterred. A mild mercy.

She waved a hand at him. “Shoo. Door will be unlocked whenever your royal ass decides to come back.”

Kevin let himself into the room he shared with Nicky and the twins with numbed fingers. He passed Andrew’s usual corner on the way to the bathroom, and willed the lingering cigarette smoke from his nostrils. When he shut the bathroom door, he faced very carefully away from the broad hanging mirror and stripped, quick and efficient, feeling the full force of his nausea. 

He could still make out the muddy recesses of bruises in his peripheral, scattered all along him from the riot. The most prominent ones swelled blue and looped like sun flares around his neck.

Kevin kicked off his underwear and stepped under the showerhead, turned the knob to the highest heat setting. Scathing water poured over his back, blistering and near painful, but he could not bring himself to pull his body away. Couldn’t care to.

He deserved this, he thought. Then, quieter, weaker: ha. 

The beloved guard dog finally bites back, Riko’s voice hissed in the black of his eyes, and Kevin slammed on the cold water, full-stop. The swift, callous difference in temperature silenced the laughter in the back of his eyes. Kevin's hands found his neck.

He pressed the heel of his palm against his clavicle, then his adam’s apple.

It hurt. Of course it did.

He pressed harder and harder, until he felt his breath leave him, his throat close, and his brain go dark with alarm. 

He thought of Andrew, pale-gold and bored, flushed red and furious in that tiny hotel room; he thought of Neil, battered and so mutilated his hands were almost entirely crusted in white, but still with the ability to stop Andrew completely in his tracks. Without even touching him, palms barring both sides of Andrew's vision as if to erect a perfect barrier between them and the rest of them. 

He thought of Andrew, shoving him up against the plastic-glass of the bus window and snarling at him, fingertips squeezed into his hammering pulse point, lips pulled to the brink to frame gleaming canines.

“Speak, or I will tear the secrets out of you,” he had spat, eyes wide and unforgiving, hold ruthless and uncompromising, and Kevin could locate the exact moment both of them knew their promise had disintegrated into oblivion.

Andrew had chosen Neil. And Kevin? 

He had almost said _please._

He wondered what Andrew would have done then.

 _Finished the job_ , the small vicious voice in him answered, and Kevin had to laugh until he was dizzy, shaking off his clawed fingers with the creaky edges of it. He sank down against the chipped ceramic tiling and wanted very much to die. Kevin didn't know how long he stayed there, huddled in his own arms, scraping his nails against his throat, feeling for the end of his life at the end of a broken lifeline. 

By the time Kevin wandered back to the women's dorm, skin rubbed raw and red, Renee, Dan and Allison were already there, scattered around on faded neon cushions and each hunched over their own wounds, first-aid kits pried open at their feet. There were probably five black eyes and sixteen shallow lacerations between the three of them.

Allison was the first to acknowledge him. “Thought you finally decided to off yourself,” she told him. Renee made a sound of displeasure. Kevin lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug, not disagreeing, and shook the bottle of unfinished vodka he'd snagged out of the fridge for her to see.

“Not until I drink this,” he replied, and a faintly disgusted look passed over her face.

“Can’t blame you. I could really use a strong drink after today.” Dan’s voice. When he turned his face toward her, a stupefied sound passed through her mouth. “Fuck, Kevin,” she said, eyes wide on his--neck. He wasn’t sure what his hour-long shower did to his overall visage, but between the heat and the cold and the vicious scrubbing, the marks probably didn’t survive well.

His nails were sharper than Andrew's.

“What.” He said. Daring her. He did not need her pity or platitudes. He did not need what Neil needed from them, or what Neil unquestionably had: their unspoken and unwavering support. 

Dan just stared back at him, shock and disgust and--anger?--flitting back and forth in the dark of her gaze before Renee pointedly cleared her throat.

“Hi, Kevin,” she said, as a way of polite intervention. Kevin flicked his eyes to her and just lifted the vodka to his lips in lieu of replying. During all of this, Allison had finished securing the last square bandage over her eye and was now popping pills into her mouth, downing it with water. Or very, very clear-looking alcohol. Painkillers, probably. 

“Over there,” Allison said when she swallowed, pointing towards the end of the hall without looking at him, which. He felt a stab of gratitude at. “Last one on the right. My room if you need it.” 

Kevin wiped his mouth on his sleeve, nodded at her, and walked away from Dan’s lingering gaze and Renee’s vaguely sad one.

The door opened to a pink room, lush red carpet, and beanbags crowded in the corner. Even before he flicked the lights on, the neon sheen to it all was obvious and apparent. He took another exceedingly long swig from his bottle. 

“Move,” Allison said from behind him, and Kevin fought not to flinch and smack her on reflex.

He shuffled to the side and stood there, one foot over the threshold and one foot outside of it, as Allison slid past him and started rummaging through the heaps on the floor.

"Nice room," he said.

"You've lied enough for a lifetime, don't you think." Allison picked out a make-up kit, not sparing him a single glance. 

Kevin didn't bother replying. None of them took apologies well. Before he could take another swig, though: "Don't haunt my door, Day. Get in here or get out."

He shoved himself completely inside mostly because he didn't want to be thrown back into the company of Renee and Dan. He shut the door behind him and heard the wood seal up like steel bars might. Grim and stone-faced, Kevin turned to face Allison, who was now holding up a powder jar and one fat brush.

"Sit," she said. He perched himself stiffly on a nearby beanbag. He held his bottle with two hands, clenching with all ten fingers, the coolness of it seeping into his hands.

Allison settled herself before him, setting a vanity on the ground next to her, the mirror tilted away from him. Her eyes flicked to his throat, then to his eyes, and Kevin knew a challenge when he saw it.

"You gonna let me do this in relative peace?" She asked.

"You sure you want me to make a promise I can't keep?" Kevin shot back.

He twisted his head back and stared her dead in the eye, not sober enough to keep himself from spitting: "Do your worst, Reynolds. I had Andrew's three hours ago."

That clamped her mouth shut, split lip pursing, and she removed the lid to her jar without another word. Kevin moved his eyes to the ceiling.

The first sweep of her brush made his left hand clench at a thigh. The second made his shoulders hike up. The third made Allison stop entirely, the movement accusatory and sharp with annoyance.

Somehow, stupidly, inanely--off all worldly things--that was what set him off. 

He wrenched out of her hold, the force of his lurch strong enough to send him tumbling off the side of the bean bag. He wanted to get away, and he wanted solid ground, so he pressed his face into the hideous red carpet, already dry heaving. There was not enough air here, not enough air anywhere. Andrew wasn't there to shove his head between his knees, because Andrew had reduced him to this state, and Andrew couldn't put him back together again. 

Not with the same hands he used to strangle Kevin with.

Fuck, he thought, hearing Allison call his name. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

A hand slid into his matted hair and _pulled_ and that--that sent the terrified, destroyed thing in him yowling. He cried out and flung a hand back, effectively dislocating the grip. 

"Don't touch me," he said, blood roaring over Riko’s cackling. Dulled red was all he could see, spread out beneath his fingers and over his neck and over his mind, a heavy hand he couldn’t shake off.

"Don't touch me," he repeated, and in his terror and desperation called for the only person he could: "Andrew. Andrew, where is he?"

"Kevin," somebody else's voice, soft and firm and most definitely not the one he wanted, broke through. "Oh, Kevin."

"Fuck," he gasped, into what he recognized as his elbows. "I need him," he said. He felt the wetness on his cheeks, the sins off his tongue, the hate in his heart and the ache behind his scars. "I need you, Andrew."

"He isn't here," again with that voice. "I'm sorry, Kevin, but Andrew isn't here."

He made another sound, a small, hopeless thing, because he knew that. He knew that fundamentally. Why else would he be here, having a fucking breakdown in Allison Reynolds's room?

"I know," his voice said, nearly unrecognizable. He finally ran it raw. Too much talking or screaming or wanting or misjudging. For what seemed like an eternity, Kevin kept his face in the dark, against the floor. Eventually, though, his stuffy nose forced him to lift his head.

Renee sat some ways away from him, cross-legged and silent, staring down at her knees. She was running a thumb over her silver cross, mouth moving in the shape of a prayer. Allison was nowhere in sight. Neither was Dan.

"Hey," Renee said. Kevin looked at her, and she looked back.

"Where's my vodka," he said, toneless. He sounded cleaved in half, voice shattered and gone missing somewhere.

"Spilled," Renee replied. "Right next to you. Allison went to get towels."

Kevin cast a look around him; he didn't imagine the wetness of the floor, then, nor the one parching his cheeks. Allison's jar had been knocked over, dark powder toppled into the hairs of the carpet, and Kevin winced a little in guilt. That would be difficult to clean up. 

"Sorry," he forced himself to say. "I'll help clean up, then go."

"You can stay," Renee said. "Really. We don't mind."

"I think you do," Kevin returned, tired of her, tired of this. "The only person capable of handling my messes is gone now. So I will go too."

"You can't be alone right now," Renee retorted, carefully stepping over what he'd just said.

"I can," Kevin replied. He sat himself up, dizzy with the distance between him and the floor. “I will."

"Kevin," Renee's voice took on the barest edge of a warning. Kevin just flicked her a despondent gaze. All the feeling in him had dried out, leaving him with the illusion of the Kevin Day he tried to grow into at PSU. He felt the blink of Riko's hold over him like two curled pinky fingers, the flicker of Andrew’s like a broken promise. "What will you do?" He said, gesturing at his bruises. "You can't do anything worse than this. You can't," and he smiled. It was miserable, hinged on teeth and bone alone.

"You are not fine." Renee said, voice evening out. "Stay. We will not try to stop you if you choose to leave, but don't. You will not fare well by yourself."

It sounded like something the Master would say, in a moment of fatherly imitation. Or Jean, as a last-ditch effort to make him stay in the Nest.

He left, anyway.

"I am fine." He said, and stood, wobbling only for a moment before his feet held.

"Yeah, right." That from the doorway. Allison, clutching a roll of paper towels and leveling an unimpressed look Kevin's way. "Sit back down, boy wonder."

“Fuck you,” he said, but as if to mock him, his knees buckled and he crashed back down to the floor, missing the beanbag by a few inches.

“Lord, you are not fine,” Renee said next to him, and Kevin realized she was closer now, much closer than before. That made him unbearably cold. 

“Don’t. Touch. Me,” he gritted out, refusing to look up. His voice almost completely died towards the end, working off paled vestiges of contempt. He screwed his eyes shut and willed himself to breathe. 

“Babe.” Allison’s voice, a pointed warning. Renee didn’t reply but Kevin dutifully heard her back away. He forcibly unlocked his shoulders and loosened his grip on the carpet and focused his attention back on his chest now that neither of them was in vicinity.

Breathe, he ordered himself. He tried: exhaling pathetic half-gasps that he was sure the two of them could hear. He sucked in, then shook it off and out. Repeated the process. His teeth rattled with every elongated intake and outtake, his tongue fat and thick in his mouth.

“It’s fine,” Kevin eventually said, after five minutes' time. His voice was so utterly destroyed, chipped and hoarse, that he had to wonder if he’d have it at all by the time Neil came back. 

If Renee or Allison were still there, the silence gave no indication. Until Allison gave a heavy, heavy sigh, and said: “Shut up, you himbo.” 

“I’ll get you some water,” that from Renee. Socked feet passed him, and the door opened and closed. 

Kevin didn’t hear her move, but somehow Allison’s shadow came down just above him. Before he could spit or snarl or whimper, though: “I’m not going to fucking touch you, Day. Just sit back. The bean bag is right next to your head. Lay back. I won’t,” Allison’s voice gentled, “I won’t touch you, believe me.”

The affirmation steeled his insides. Slowly, he unclenched his jaw and pried himself inch by inch off the carpet. His left hand grasped for the bean bag’s grainy texture and when he had a handful of it, dragged the thing to the rest of him with immense difficulty. It was softer than the carpet and marginally more comfortable. He didn’t have enough energy to contain the rough exhalation that filtered past his mouth.

“Better?” Allison asked. Kevin grunted an unintelligible reply. Somehow, he knew she was rolling her eyes.

A knock came at the door, two resounding knuckle raps. Allison got up; the door opened and closed. Allison’s feet rounded back, scraped knees crackling as she squatted.

“Drink,” she said. Kevin turned his face to the side and saw the cup of water Renee had promised. He dutifully lifted up a palm, and Allison passed the cup into his grip without grazing him.

He drank quickly, slamming it back like he might a shot. When he was done, Kevin rolled it on its side, licked his lips, and sank back into the bean bag, once again catatonic.

For a while, neither of them said a thing. 

“Definitely something,” Allison said, mild and in passing, and that gutted a laugh out of him. 

“You know nothing,” Kevin said, and for once she let him have the last word.


End file.
